‘And then what?’ she said. ‘It is always best to be prepared.’
He looked wry. ‘Are you feeling better?’
‘A little,’ she said. It wasn’t true.
He studied her for a long moment. ‘Rest today if you can,’ he said; then he bowed and left, shouting orders to strike camp.
Alienor’s head was pounding and her mouth was dry. The thought of food made her feel sick and she made do with a few swallows of milk from one of the goats they had brought with them. She was dizzy when she mounted the cob, but the thought of bumping along in one of the carts was unbearable, and she felt more in control on a horse.
Following the Cusman attack, they travelled in anxiety, looking round with wide eyes, but the land shimmered in a late-summer heat haze and they saw no one for the twenty miles they covered that day. The local population had moved themselves and their herds away from the depredations of the advancing French. All they encountered were more unburied German corpses, their positions marked by the wild dogs and kites that temporarily abandoned their scavenging as the troops plodded past. No one was keen to go foraging today. Alienor managed to eat some dry bread at noon, but it lay in her stomach like lead and gave her no sustenance. They passed a small town that bartered them a few sacks of flour, crocks of lamb fat and eggs, again let down from ropes over the walls and only a spit in the ocean of what they needed.
Alienor clung to her saddle and thought of Aquitaine. The soft breezes in the palace garden at Poitiers; the sweeping rush of the ocean at Talmont. The spread wings of a white gyrfalcon. La Reina. Angel wings. Holy Mary, I am coming to you. Holy Mary, hear me now for the love of God and Christ Jesus your son.
Mercifully they found a good camping place by a small stream an hour before sunset and her servants pitched her tent. Alienor almost tumbled from the cob’s back, feeling weak and wretched. Perhaps she was going to die out here and become another set of bones bleaching under this burning foreign sun.
She lay down in her tent, but the bread she had eaten had only been biding its time, and she had to make another sudden dive for the brass ablution bowl.
‘Madam, the sire de Rancon is here,’ a squire announced from outside the tent.
‘Tell him to wait,’ she gasped.
When she had finished retching, she ordered Mamile to remove the bowl. The smell remained though and she had to clench her teeth and swallow hard. Outside, she heard Mamile speak to Geoffrey. Moments later, without her permission, he entered the tent followed by an olive-skinned young woman neatly dressed in a plain dark robe and white wimple, a large satchel carried on a strap between her shoulder and hip.
Dear God, he had brought her a nun, Alienor thought as the woman curtseyed.
‘This is Marchisa,’ Geoffrey said. ‘She is skilled in healing women’s complaints; she comes highly recommended and she will help you.’
Alienor felt too wretched to argue or concern herself with details. She limply waved the young woman to rise. She could have been anything between twenty and thirty with beautiful dark eyes set under well-defined black brows. Although her behaviour was demure, the curve of her lips revealed humour and spirit.
‘Madam, the lord tells me you are sick.’ Her voice musical and fluent. She pressed her hand to Alienor’s forehead. ‘Ah, you are burning,’ she said, and turned round to Geoffrey. ‘The Queen needs to be with her women.’
‘I will leave you then.’ He lingered until Marchisa gave him a stronger look. ‘Make her better,’ he said and ducked out of the tent flaps.
Marchisa returned her attention to Alienor. ‘Your blood must be cooled,’ she said. ‘Permit me.’ With delicate fingers she removed Alienor’s veil and gold net under-cap. She directed the other women to fill a large brass bowl with tepid water. Producing a pouch from her satchel, she sprinkled into it a powder smelling of rose and spices with a clean note of ginger. She gently combed Alienor’s hair, knotted it and pinned it up on her head, and then, dipping a cloth in the scented water, bathed Alienor’s hot face and throat.
‘So many suffer on the road,’ she said as she worked. ‘You eat and drink things you should not; you wear the wrong clothes; you breathe bad humours.’ She clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. ‘You must take off your gown.’ She set aside the bowl to unfasten the lacing on Alienor’s dress and help her remove it. ‘Come now, come now.’
Alienor obeyed listlessly. It was almost too much effort to raise and lower her limbs. The coolness was a relief but it also accentuated the discomfort in her stomach, which felt worse in contrast. Marchisa continued to wipe her down, and helped her through another bout of shuddering sickness. When it was over she made Alienor rinse her mouth with a decoction of liquorice and ginger in boiled spring water. She had Alienor’s sour bedclothes stripped and her pallet remade with clean linen.
‘The sire de Rancon is a good man,’ Marchisa said. ‘He is deeply concerned for you.’
Alienor made a small sound of acknowledgement. All she wanted to do was sleep. Marchisa helped her into a clean chemise and saw her tucked into the newly made bed. She anointed her temples with a fresh-smelling unguent. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘You will sleep for a while, and then drink a little and sleep again, and then we shall see.’ Alienor closed her eyes and felt the healer woman’s hand at her brow, cool-palmed and soothing. She dreamed again of Aquitaine, of Bordeaux and Belin, of the roar of the ocean at Talmont. Of Poitiers and the deep green forests of the Limousin uplands. She flew above them on outspread wings like a white gyrfalcon, and her feathers were as cold as snow. The bird’s hunting cry pierced the frozen blue air, and she woke with a sudden gasp. For a moment she lay blinking, uncertain where she was, for the pure, cold blue had vanished and the air she breathed now was dark and scented with spices. She could see the young woman grinding herbs by the soft glow of an oil lamp. As Alienor strove to sit up, she put down the pestle and mortar and came to her side.
‘You have slept well, madam, and the fever is diminished,’ she said, having felt Alienor’s cheek and neck with cool hands. ‘Will you take a drink now?’
Alienor felt light and dizzy, as if all the marrow had been drawn from her bones, leaving them hollow like a bird’s. ‘I dreamed of flying,’ she said and took the cup the young woman handed her, once again tasting the ginger and liquorice mixture. ‘Marchisa,’ she said. ‘I remember your name.’
‘That is so, madam.’ She curtseyed.
‘And how do you come to be in my tent, other than by the grace of the sire de Rancon. Where did he find you? What is your story?’
‘My name is Marchisa de Gençay. I am travelling with my brother to Jerusalem to pray for the souls of our parents.’
Marchisa folded her hands in her lap. ‘As a young man my grandsire went on a pilgrimage and settled on land in the principality of Antioch, where he married my grandmother, a native Christian. She bore him a daughter, and in her turn that daughter married my father, who was on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He brought her home to Gençay with him and they lived out their lives there. Now they are both dead and my brother and I are travelling to pray at the tomb of the Holy Sepulchre.’
Alienor sipped the ginger and liquorice tisane. ‘And how are you known to my lord de Rancon?’
‘My brother Elias is a serjeant in his service; the seigneur de Rancon heard that I had some skill with nursing the sick and he thought I might be able to help you.’
‘You have no husband then? I thought perhaps you were a nun.’
Marchisa looked down. ‘I am a widow, madam, and content to remain so. My husband died several years ago. We had no children and I returned home to care for my parents until they too died.’
Alienor absorbed the tale with sympathy but without pity, because she could tell from the set of Marchisa’s jaw that pity was the last thing her pride would accept. She was tired again and she needed to sleep, but a notion was forming in her mind.